Movie credits

Director

Actor

Movie facts

Running time

MPAA rating

R for sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, some violence and drug use

Year released

2013

Robert Denerstein

For 27 years, Robert Denerstein was the film critic at The Rocky Mountain News. Read more of Robert's reviews at Denerstein Unleashed.

Dom’s a brutal man without impulse control, a stocky, angry mess
of a fellow who refused to rat out his partners in crime while in
prison.

For that, Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir) — the crime czar who
profited from Dom’s silence — has a debt to pay. So Dom and his
buddy Dickie (Richard E. Grant) travel to the south of France to
visit Mr. Fontaine’s estate and collect Dom’s reward.

One assumes that Shepard, who splashes title cards over bright
red screens and adds other pop-oriented flourishes, gave Law all
the room he needed to find his inner beast.

Law obliged by putting as much physicality into the role as
possible. When Dom gets out of prison, he looks as if he’s going
to burst the seams of his dated double-breasted blue suit.

When he returns to London, a thug threatens to slice off his ...
well ... you know. I suppose it’s appropriate since the priapic
Dom opens the movie with a soaring, ferocious monologue
proclaiming the glories of his penis.

For all his bravado, Dom’s a magnet for bad luck. He probably
doesn’t expect to be greeted warmly when he tries to reunite with
the daughter (Emilia Clarke) who grew up without him. Clarke’s
Evelyn resents Dom deeply — and probably justifiably.

By the time Dom locates Evelyn, she’s living with a Senegalese
musician with whom she’s had a son.

In trying for too much (the movie’s episodic story elements
create a cascading slice of contemporary British life), Shepard
may have achieved too little. Dom Hemingway becomes the movie’s
story, a pretty big burden for any character — even one as
out-sized as Dom.

A scattershot collection of low-life bits and pieces, Dom
Hemingway mellows with the unfortunate emergence of some
late-picture sentimentality.

Still, Law’s performance has too much raw energy to ignore: He’s
playing a man who doesn’t know whether there’s anything about
himself that’s worth salvaging. Dom rails at others, at an
uncaring universe and perhaps at himself.

If Dom has any charm, it derives from his naive determination not
to let the universe win.